In My Mom Jayne, Mariska Hargitay unpacks the details of her childhood and the trauma following her late mother Jayne Mansfield‘s tragic death in 1967.
Jayne was in the mix of 1950s Hollywood. Though she was known at the time as the stereotypical “dumb blonde” bombshell, Jayne was a hard worker for the remainder of her life. Born Vera Jayne Palmer, Jayne rose to fame for her roles in box office hits like Too Hot To Handle, and she won a Theatre World Award for her work on Broadway.
Jayne died on June 28, 1967, while in a car that was heading toward New Orleans, where she was scheduled to appear on Midday Show. In the front seat of the vehicle were Jayne, her attorney and partner at the time, Sam Brody, and 19-year-old driver Ronald B. Harrison. Three of Jayne’s children, including Mariska, were in the backseat of the car, and Jayne’s four dogs accompanied them.
Just before 2:30 a.m., the car crashed into the back of a tractor-trailer that slowed down because of a mosquito insecticide spraying truck. Two of the dogs in the vehicle died along with the three adults, but all of Jayne’s children survived with minor injuries.
Though Jayne’s cause of death was determined to be a “crushed skull with avulsion of cranium and brain,” rumors circulated that she was decapitated. Photographs surfaced of what appeared to be a blonde head in the vehicle’s windshield, but multiple outlets reported that this could have just been a wig.
Jayne was just 34 years old when she died in 1967.
Jayne’s children Mariska, Zoltan and Mickey Jr. — whom she shared with second husband Mickey Hargitay — survived the car accident. The siblings owned up about the traumatic memory in Mariska’s 2025 documentary, My Mom Jayne, recalling that their then-3-year-old sister was nearly left at the scene of the accident.
